This week, the Publishizer team sat down with Tully Minoski, author of trending campaign Monsters in My Belly to learn more about the inspiration behind the book! 

Publishizer: What inspired you to write Monsters in My Belly? Was it based on personal experiences?

Tully: Oh, it was definitely based on personal experiences. Many personal experiences. Daily personal experiences!

The inspiration came when my wife was trying (emphasis on trying) to put our daughter Skylar, a newborn at the time, down for a nap. I was trying (emphasis on trying) to nap at the same time, but she was so loud. I remember listening to the whole put-down sequence, a sequence I was very familiar with, and the script just came to me almost as a way to frame, explain, and process the experience of having a newborn, or at least this aspect of having a newborn.

Publishizer: Can you introduce us to the three monsters and how they help (or hinder) bedtime?

Tully: They don’t help. Let’s be clear. None of them help! (parents, back me up on this 😊)

The first monster is the hiccups. This one is the scariest because it feels like your holding a grenade. Since babies can’t keep there food down very well, you’re just kind of left to cross your fingers and hold your breath when the hiccups show up.

The next monster is fake hunger. In my very non-medical experience, newborns only have two buttons: a sleeping button and an eating button. And despite having only two buttons, they still find a way to hit the wrong one. A lot. Sometimes after putting our kids down—even if its immediately after they’ve been fed—they’ll do this weird thing where they open their mouth to the air like they ordered a bottle of milk off Instacart and expect it’ll be air delivered straight to their mouth by a drone.

The last monster is gas. This one is the most frustrating because it causes lots of screaming and there’s really nothing you can do. Except tummy rubs. Which, in my experience, also do nothing. But you still do them. Because you have a screaming baby.

Publishizer: How do you hope parents and kids will relate to the book’s themes?

Tully: I want to be clear that the main goal of the book is entertainment, not education. It’s meant to be funny for parents, and the (forthcoming) illustrations are meant to be fun (not scary) for the kids. That said, parenthood (and childhood) are some of the few aspects of life that binds us all. Your age, your race, your wealth, your political affiliation, your occupation, none of that matters. The experience is the same. The monsters are the same. It transcends time and might even transcend humanity. I remember going to Uganda and seeing a gorilla Mom with a very young baby gorilla climbing all over her and harassing her. She looked like she had been put in a blender. The experience gets us all!

Publishizer: The book uses humor to address challenges parents face. Why was it important for you to take a lighthearted approach?

Tully: The blunt reality of parenthood is that it is exceedingly difficult. It was difficult for those who came before you. And it will be difficult for those who come after you, too. Humor serves an important function because it takes some of the sting out of that hardship, and reminds us that our experiences can be as ridiculous as they are hard, and that we’re not alone!

Publishizer: What advice would you give to parents who are feeling overwhelmed by the chaos of raising little ones?

Tully: Give yourself a break. Sometimes life will feel like a dumpster fire. I think that’s normal. At least it’s normal for me. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it’s not going to be perfect. The whole experience is messy, it’s designed to be messy, it’s expected to be messy. Since the launch of this book, our family has had to negotiate the needs of a newborn, back-to-back viruses our two-year-old contracted, a bizarre fear of pooping (by the two-year-old, not me 😊), significant changes at my work, and the launch of my wife’s app-based alternative to speech therapy (shameless plug, KaBloom Coaching!!!).

If that’s not enough, literally five minutes after my wife and I had a conversation about being at the end of our rope, a large tree limb snapped in our backyard, ripping out our electrical infrastructure and starting a small, smoldering fire in our backyard. Not a metaphorical fire. A real fire!

At the end of the day, just enjoy the parts of the experience that you can, and, just know, like the weather here in Kansas City, it’ll all change in the next ten minutes!

Publishizer: Thank you, Tully for spending some time with us this week! Congratulatinos on the success of your campaign and we can't wait to see your book in print soon!

Monsters in My Belly is available for pre order on Publishizer.